The Soviet Union (Interkosmos), the United States (NASA), China (CNSA), India (ISRO),[6] and Japan (JAXA)[7] are the only five nations to have successfully achieved soft landings.

[10] Two organizations have attempted but failed to achieve soft landings: Israeli private space agency SpaceIL with their Beresheet spacecraft (2019), and Japanese company ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1 (2023).

In the 1950s, tensions mounted between the two ideologically opposed superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union that had emerged as victors in the conflict, particularly after the development by both countries of the hydrogen bomb.

[17] The craft was also barely visible to the naked eye as the steady beeping of the radio beacon aboard Sputnik 1 as it passed overhead every 96 minutes, which was widely viewed on both sides[18] as effective propaganda to Third World countries demonstrating the technological superiority of the Soviet political system compared to that of the U.S.

These newly developed missiles were made available to civilians of NASA for various projects (which would have the added benefit of demonstrating the payload, guidance accuracy and reliabilities of U.S. ICBMs to the Soviets).

The final three Ranger probes performed successful high altitude lunar reconnaissance photography missions during intentional crash impacts between 2.62 and 2.68 kilometres per second (9,400 and 9,600 km/h).

Those flown on the Thor booster modified with an Able upper stage carried an infrared image scanning television system with a resolution of 1 milliradian to study the Moon's surface, an ionization chamber to measure radiation in space, a diaphragm/microphone assembly to detect micrometeorites, a magnetometer, and temperature-variable resistors to monitor spacecraft internal thermal conditions.

NASA then collaborated with the United States Army's Ballistic Missile Agency to fly two extremely small cone-shaped probes on the Juno ICBM, carrying only photocells which would be triggered by the light of the Moon and a lunar radiation environment experiment using a Geiger-Müller tube detector.

[30][31] The first of these reached an altitude of only around 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi), gathering data that established the presence of the Van Allen radiation belts before reentering Earth's atmosphere.

[31] The final Pioneer lunar probe design consisted of four "paddlewheel" solar panels extending from a one-meter diameter spherical spin-stabilized spacecraft body equipped to take images of the lunar surface with a television-like system, estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, study radiation, measure magnetic fields, detect low frequency electromagnetic waves in space and use a sophisticated integrated propulsion system for maneuvering and orbit insertion as well.

[33][34][35] Following the unsuccessful Atlas-Able Pioneer probes, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory embarked upon an uncrewed spacecraft development program whose modular design could be used to support both lunar and interplanetary exploration missions.

[40] From that vantage point, scientists could make direct measurements of the magnetosphere over a period of many months while engineers perfected new methods to routinely track and communicate with spacecraft over such large distances.

This lander (code-named Tonto) was designed to provide impact cushioning using an exterior blanket of crushable balsa wood and an interior filled with incompressible liquid freon.

...We're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money, but we're talking about fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it, in my opinion, to do it is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them."

Other instruments gathering data before the mother ship crashed onto the Moon were a gamma ray spectrometer to measure overall lunar chemical composition and a radar altimeter.

After the end of the Gemini program, the Soviet Union began flying their second-generation Zond crewed spacecraft in 1967 with the ultimate goal of looping a cosmonaut around the Moon and returning him or her immediately to Earth.

Zond 5 was the first spacecraft to carry life from Earth to the vicinity of the Moon and return, initiating the final lap of the Space Race with its payload of tortoises, insects, plants, and bacteria.

Far more capable than the Zond, the Apollo spacecraft had the necessary rocket power to slip into and out of lunar orbit and to make course adjustments required for a safe reentry during the return to Earth.

More modest missions such as flying around the Moon, or a space lab in lunar orbit (both were proposed by Kennedy to von Braun), offered too much advantage to the Soviets; landing, however, would capture the world's imagination.

At the same time, Kennedy had suggested various joint programs, including a possible Moon landing by Soviet and U.S. astronauts and the development of better weather-monitoring satellites, eventually resulting in the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

[50] Sergey Korolev, the Soviet space program's chief designer, had started promoting his Soyuz craft and the N1 launcher rocket that would have the capability of carrying out a human Moon landing.

Khrushchev directed Korolev's design bureau to arrange further space firsts by modifying the existing Vostok technology, while a second team started building a completely new launcher and craft, the Proton booster and the Zond, for a human cislunar flight in 1966.

[52] President Richard Nixon had speechwriter William Safire prepare a condolence speech for delivery in case Armstrong and Aldrin became marooned on the Moon's surface and could not be rescued.

[54] On 16 August 2006, the Associated Press reported that NASA is missing the original Slow-scan television tapes (which were made before the scan conversion for conventional TV) of the Apollo 11 Moon walk.

The LCROSS data collecting shepherding spacecraft was launched together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on 18 June 2009 on board an Atlas V rocket with a Centaur upper stage.

On 9 October 2009, at 11:31 UTC, the Centaur upper stage impacted the lunar surface, releasing the kinetic energy equivalent of detonating approximately 2 tons of TNT (8.86 GJ).

[83] After making a successful landing within Von Kármán crater, the Chang'e 4 lander deployed the 140-kilogram (310 lb) Yutu-2 rover and began human's first close exploration of the far side of the Moon.

[84][85] On 22 February 2019, Israeli private space agency SpaceIL launched their spacecraft Beresheet on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida with the intention of achieving a soft landing.

[94] In Russia's first attempt to reach the Moon since 1976, and since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Luna 25 spacecraft failed during "pre-landing" maneuvers, and crashed into the lunar surface on 19 August 2023.

There is widespread interest in performing a future landing on Jupiter's moon Europa to drill down and explore the possible liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface.